


Kiss Me, Not Them

by FireflySong



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, dares, did people ever play spin the bottle?, gratuitous mentions of kissing, gratuitous plugging of authors other stories, like Super Heavy, mentions of past games of spin the bottle, or was i just that uncool nerdy kid that was never invited to those types of parties?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26609587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflySong/pseuds/FireflySong
Summary: Sam's used to being pulled into the middle of Josh, Chris, and Ashley's dares after all these years. That being said, this one definitely takes the cake for weirdest one yet.
Relationships: Ashley Brown & Sam Giddings & Chris Hartley, Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	Kiss Me, Not Them

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes a certain phrase will just come to you and you refuse to leave until you've written an entire 4k fic for it. 'I need you to kiss me' was that phrase this time. That being said, I haven't had this much fun writing anything since _Oh no. (Oh shit!) There's Only One Bed!_ so I hope you enjoy it anyways!

"I need you to kiss me."

Successfully shocked out of the book she was reading, Sam looked up to confirm the owner of the voice. And yup, the blond hair, square glasses, and overabundance of shirts determined that it was, in fact, Chris Hartley standing in front of her.

"I'm sorry, _what?_ "

"I need you to kiss me." Chris repeated, though not without acting like doing so was of great inconvenience to him.

From where she sat on the couch in the Washington's living room, Sam looked over her shoulder to see if maybe Hannah had finished her shower, but no luck. The sound of running water and Hannah's singing was clearly audible even through the closed bathroom door. It was just her luck that her best friend liked to take long showers after tennis practice, meaning that she was here alone with Chris spouting crazy talk.

"I'm not kissing you, Chris," Sam sighed as she returned to her book, hoping that by turning a page it would be enough to convince Chris to leave. Once again, she wasn't nearly that lucky.

"What? Why?"

The look that she gave him completely matched the dumbfounded tone of his voice. "Do you want a list?"

"Well, I mean, that's not really—"

Too late. Sam had put down her book and raised her hand to count off her fingers. "One, you're so not my type. Two, I look at you and feel nothing but the affection I would feel towards a particularly annoying little brother—"

"Okay, first of all, I'm actually older than _you_ last I checked."

She ignores him easily. "Three, you're my best friend's older brother's best friend, so that's basically as bad as me kissing Josh. And four, you're dating Ashley." She looked up at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. "You _are_ still dating Ash, correct?"

Chris sputters indignantly. "Of course we're still dating!"

"...And everything's going fine?"

Sam watches as a familiar goofy and completely enamoured grin takes over his face as he sighs happily. "Yeah. Yeah, everything's going great. Fantastic even. It's perfect." He shakes his head to clear whatever rose-colored thoughts of Ash had formed. "That-that doesn't matter though. It's not important."

Sam eyebrows just about fly up into her hairline. " _Doesn't matter? Not important?_ You think that the fact that you're trying to kiss me while your own girlfriend is just on another floor is inconsequential to the conversation right now?"

Chris groans tiredly as rubs at his face under his glasses. "Okay, for the record, I'm not _trying_ to kiss you. I have not made a single move to try and kiss you. All I said is 'I need you to kiss me'."

"That's basically the same thing!"

"It is _so_ not! And trust me when I say this, but this kiss would mean absolutely nothing."

"...If you're still trying to convince me, then you're doing a frankly terrible job at it. Insulting the person by saying that their kiss 'would mean nothing to them' is not the way to go about this."

Chris only groans harder. "Jesus Christ, Sam. That's not what I meant!"

Taking advantage of the fact that Chris is too busy trying not to dig himself into the hole any further then he has already (an impossibility, the only way out is down at this point), Sam digs out her phone and tries to send a covert text to Ashley. What she wants to send is something along the lines of 'your boyfriend is trying to convince me kiss him. send help. and possibly a shrink.', but seeing as she's trying to type without looking, she has a feeling that what she sends is closer to 'chris. kiss. help.' like some sort of old fashioned telegraph operator.

To her exhaustive relief, she doesn't have to wait long. She never gets a response back to her text, not for clarification or to assure her that a shrink actually is on their way, but it doesn't matter. Barely a minute later, Ashley is pushing open the door from the stairs and is running into the room, shouting at Chris.

"You little liar! You told me that all you were gonna do is go to the bathroom!"

To her surprise—which is surprising in and of itself, Sam didn't think anything else could surprise her more than _Chris_ of all people asking her to kiss him—the sight of Ash doesn't send fear or horror or the realization that he has gone and truly fucked up through him. All he does is just roll his head back over his shoulders and let out a deep, pained sigh. "Oh my god. You seriously called Ash? Really, Sam?" He turns to address his girlfriend, whom Sam is just noticing is not nearly as furious or upset as she would have expected. If anything, she just looks annoyed. "To be fair—to be _so_ fair!—I did go to the bathroom. And then I saw Sam just sitting there and decided to kill two birds with one stone."

"Wait," Sam can't help but butt in dryly, "you're telling me that you went to take a leak and then figured that you may as well kiss me while you're it. Wow. How romantic."

Both Chris and Ashley ignore her, mainly because Ash has started to violently stab a finger into his chest. "You-you... cheater! You're a goddamn cheater, you know that? Cheater cheater pumpkin eater!" And alright, Sam would be the first to admit that while Ash was very well-known for her distaste of cursing in general, she had a feeling that finding out that your boyfriend—whom you've been pining over since you were both pre-teens—was trying to kiss another woman could have allowed a swear or two. An asshole at the very least.

She's a little stunned when Ash spins to face her instead, but keeps her finger pointed at Chris's chest. "You can't kiss Chris, Sam!"

"I mean, yeah, obviously. Why—"

"You should kiss me instead!"

Sam's ready to take it all back. Nothing, _nothing_ , can possibly surprise her more than the words coming out of Ashley's mouth. She can't even speak she's so dumbfounded, leaving her to just gawp. Had she shifted into another dimension when she had been reading her book or something? It was the only thing making sense right now. The only reason that could explain why two people who were clearly head-over-heels for each other would be fighting over kissing _her_.

She's not sure what to expect anymore. She's ready for anything at this point honestly. Josh bursting out of the wall like some horror-obsessed version of the Kool-Aid man and proclaiming his love for her would almost be par for the course right now. So when Ash's face instead starts to colour a red bright enough that it easily matches the shade of her hair, it's so normal that Sam almost _does_ kiss her.

Before she can though, Ash turns back to Chris with eyes wide. "You didn't tell her?!" she hisses out. "Chris!"

Chris just throws up his hands in supplication. "I didn't get the time, Ash! I was about to, but then you came bursting through the door cause she texted you before I could get a word in."

"...Okay. Now I _know_ I'm missing something. What the hell is going on right now? Why in the world are you two trying to kiss me?"

There's a moment of silence where Chris and Ashley just stare at each other. There's a conversation going on right now, but not one that Sam is able to understand. There's no movements of the hands, no jerking of the head, no frantic twitching of the muscles in their faces to give her any hint to what the conversation could entail. So she just sits there on the couch, book long forgotten at her side, while she waits for what had better be a damn good explanation.

Eventually, the conversation ends in Ash's favour, or least she assumes it does, when Chris gives another groan and looks to Sam. "Alright, so _maybe_ I started this conversation off on the wrong foot."

"You think?"

"So I'm just go ahead and lay all of the cards on the table." Chris takes a deep breath. "Long story short, Josh, Ash, and I were talking one night and we discovered that the two of us have only kissed one other person aside from each other. And well, Josh dared us to try and find a person that would agree to kiss one of us so we would have bragging rights."

Sam blinks for a moment, activating the parts of her brain that she has specifically for decoding the nonsense that the three of them come up with, and then just stares in disbelief. "Wait, so you're telling me, that since you and Ash have only ever kissed one other person, you're now trying to find some poor shmuck to convince to kiss one of you. Just so you can say that you've kissed more people then the other has?"

"Uh yeah, that's literally what I just said."

Well, that at least explains why Ashley hadn't texted her back asking for an explanation on what the words 'Chris' and 'kiss' could even mean when there's no 'Ash' to be part of the equation.

"Uh huh. Well, I have two problems with this."

"Just two?"

Sam ignores them. "The first one being that you two have definitely kissed _way_ more than one other person."

Both of them tilt their head and give her such similar confused looks, that for a second Sam understands why some people say that once you've been married long enough, you start to resemble your spouse. The two of them have only (finally) been dating a couple of months at this point, and they've already adopted the other's mannerisms and acting like they've been married for fifty years. "Umm... pretty sure that's not true."

"Yeah Sam," Ash agrees, "I think both of us would remember kissing other people."

She rolls her eyes at them. "I'm talking about the numerous games of spin the bottle that you've played in, you idiots."

"Oh, those." Ash waves her hands like she's trying to shoo away a particularly troublesome fly. "Those don't count."

"You wanna try explaining how those don't count? Cause I'm pretty sure that they should."

"You said it yourself, we've both been forced to sit in way too many games of spin the bottle over the years," Chris answers with a shrug. "So let me ask you this, Sam: do _you_ know how many people you've kissed in the likely thousands of games we've played in?"

"What? Are you serious? Of course not. I've played enough of that game to last a lifetime or two to even begin guessing." Before either can interrupt or butt in, Sam gives conspiratorial smile. "I have a feeling though that you two were _far_ more concerned with who you _weren't_ kissing as opposed to who you were anyways."

And just like she expected, both Chris and Ash pinken a bit at that, but neither deny it. And why would they? "The only kiss that would have ever mattered to you two never actually happened. Which is super weird and unlikely considering how often Hannah liked to play it." Sam pauses as a thought comes to her. "Though, there was that one time that the bottle landed on Chris just as the power went out during that blizzard a couple of years back."

Ashley turns to Chris, looking for all the world like Sam had finally answered the question that had been keeping her up every night since. Which it probably had. "I _knew_ it. I knew that spin stopped on you! But by the time we finally had some light again, someone had accidentally kicked the bottle so I couldn't be sure."

Chris just runs a hand over his face, grumbling at the memory. "Of course it landed on me! God, do you have any idea how pissed that freak outage made me? I kept hoping that you were gonna, I don't know, ambush me later that night or something."

Ash's eyes nearly bug out as she stares at him. " _Ambush you?_ Have you even met me? You know I that I could never do something like that!"

"Yeah, I know that! But well, since you were the one who spun, I kinda figured it was up to you make the first move. I-I didn't want to force something on you that you wouldn't have wanted in the first place..." As Chris looks away to rub at the back of his head, Sam notices the way his ears are getting darker the longer this topic goes on for.

Ash mumbles something under her breath, cheeks just as dark as his ears, but before either of them can ask her to speak up, she's already lifted her head and tucking some hair behind her ear bashfully as she repeats herself. "I was kinda hoping you were gonna corner me too, actually..."

There's absolutely no way to miss the way that Chris's face just lights up at that. "Really?" Ash nods shyly and he reaches over to grab at her hand, and it's not even a second later that their fingers have already become tangled together. "O-oh. Well, I mean, I'm still down for a re-do of that night if you are."

When she looks up at him, it's with a smile that's just as wide and bright as his. "Yeah?" Ashley whispers. And Sam notices the way she's starting to stand on her tip toes just as Chris has begun to lean down, and immediately takes this as her moment to interrupt them with a loud cough. They both quickly stop what they were about to do, though neither make a move to actually let go of the other's hand.

Well, if nothing else, Sam can at least be sure that this whole 'kiss another person' thing certainly isn't putting a damper on things between them.

"S-sorry."

"Yeah, um, sorry about that."

Sam sighs. "Honestly? I'm just even more confused on why you're even going through with this now. Seems to me like you two are perfectly happy only kissing each other from now on."

Chris gives a disbelieving snort. "You've clearly never had one of Josh's dare cookies. Cause trust me, if you have then you would know that this is by far the easier and safer route."

Sam has certainly not ever had one of his dare cookies, and she's getting the idea that it's probably in her best interest to keep it that way.

"And I mean, it's like I told you earlier, this isn't going to mean anything. It's just for one of Josh's stupid dares."

"You know, that actually brings me back to my second point: why in God's green earth am I the shmuck that you've chosen for this?"

Ash is the one to answer. "Because we needed someone who would actually bother to hear us out and not laugh in our faces. We both agreed that we were gonna come down and do this together, but _someone_ —" she gives Chris a none to gentle poke in the side "—decided to try and cheat to give himself an unfair advantage."

"Hey, you weren't here to hear the things she was saying about me! I needed all the advantages I could get, okay?"

Sam groans loudly, hoping and praying that Hannah will finish up with her shower sooner rather than later. "So why me? Why not just ask Josh then?"

The looks of complete disbelief that both of them are giving her is making Sam think that she's missing something really obvious, but she doesn't have the first clue on what it could be.

"We can't ask Josh, Sam." Chris says finally.

"Why? If it's just because he's the one that dared you to do this stupid thing, then I think that's kinda a little unfair."

Ash rolls her eyes and starts to speak a little slower as if to help Sam understand. "No, we can't ask Josh because he's the only other person that either of us has kissed."

If Ashley had thought that this was going to help her understand, then she was dead wrong. "I'm sorry. I thought you just said that _both_ of you have kissed Josh."

"Um, yeah. That's obviously we're asking you."

There's a beat while Sam tries very, very hard to absorb this knowledge that she has been given, but gives up very quickly. "I-I don—how— _why?_ "

"First kiss." The two of them answer at the same time. They even gave a little synchronized blasé shrug to go along with it.

Honestly, she probably should have guessed that given the background info on them they had so helpfully revealed to her. "...and who kissed him first?"

Ashley raises her hand at the same time that Chris points his thumb at her. There's almost no emotion in their faces. No embarrassment or shame or nostalgia. Nothing. Both of them are speaking as though this is just as much an everyday fact of life that both of their first kisses were with the same person—their best friend no less!—as it is that the sky is blue.

"Okay, but, why Josh?"

"Jesus Christ. You've known me for years Sam, as if I was ever gonna ask Ash to do it. Holy shit." Ash nods along with Chris, clearly knowing exactly where he was coming from. Probably because it was the exact same reason.

"So, what? You just figured that asking your other best friend to kiss you was the better option?"

Chris snorts. "Who else was I gonna ask? I mean, your first kiss was with Hannah obviously."

Sam chokes on nothing but air in her shock. "What?! No! Of course it wasn't Hannah! Oh my god! And what the hell do you mean by obviously?!"

"Well, what are friends for if not being there to be your first kiss. May as well have it with my best friend instead of some person I don't even know over a bottle." The two of them are looking at her as though _she's_ the crazy one right now. As though kissing your best friend since childhood is just the normal thing to do. Though, now that she thinks of it, this _is_ Chris and Ash she's talking to. She supposed that kissing your _other_ best friend because you're too nervous to kiss the one you actually want to, was just the logical outcome.

Also the extremely crazy and bat-shit insane option, but logical in a weird way that Sam will never, and does not want to, understand.

"—told you it wasn't gonna be Hannah."

"Oh don't give me that Ash, you figured it was gonna be Hannah as much as I did."

"Please. It was always clearly going to be Beth."

Oh hell, they were still talking about this? "It wasn't Beth either!"

For whatever reason, this seemed to really puzzle Chris especially. He had a look on his face not unlike he was trying to piece together an especially challenging jigsaw puzzle, when it suddenly turned to an expression of a curious sort of horror. Sam really, really did not want to know what horribly wrong conclusion he had come to.

"Wait, are you saying that your first kiss was with Josh too?" Oh god, it was even worse then she imagined it would be, though she wasn't able to truly restrain her bark of laughter when Chris turned to look into the area of the building where Josh was no doubt waiting for his best friends to get back. "That, that _harlot!_ "

"Of course it wasn't Josh, oh my god. Why the hell are you two so insistent that my first kiss was with my best friend or her siblings?"

Ashley just threw up her hands in exasperation, though it looked a little weird seeing as she never let go of Chris's hand to do it, causing his arm to just jerk up next to her head. Not that either seemed too bothered by it. "Well who else would it have been with? Just please tell me it wasn't with some stranger during your first game."

Sam rolled her eyes, but she couldn't fight the smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "I promise you it didn't happen during a game of spin the bottle. That being said, I'm not telling you who it _was_ with."

Chris and Ashley looked at each other and after only a second, came to an agreement with a nod.

"It was Mike."

" _Definitely_ Mike."

Before Sam could even figure out how to respond to _that_ claim, the two of them were in her face.

"It doesn't matter. We know that you're just trying to stall for time, Sam."

"Yeah, so you gotta choose. You have to kiss one of us."

"So who's it gonna be, Sam? Who's it gonna be? Me? Or Chris?"

Behind Sam, the bathroom door opened.

"Sorry for the wait Sam, the hot water just felt _sooooo_ good and I couldn't help myself and—" Hannah paused in her blissful sighing to see Chris and Ashley staring daggers at Sam on the couch, both of them leaning down so they were right in her face. "...Am I interrupting something?"

Sam turned faster then she ever had in her life, almost leaping over the back of the couch in her eagerness to face her best friend standing in the doorway to the bathroom, towel in her hair and steam from the hot shower drifting out around her. "Oh thank god, Hannah. You're not interrupting anything, in fact, you're just in time!"

"...Just in time for what?" Hannah was starting to look little nervous and hesitant, and there wasn't a single part of Sam that could blame her. Desperately she wracked her brain for anything to say that would get her out of this predicament, but unfortunately Chris beat her to it.

"Sam was just telling me that she never saw that mini-series that you like so much. You know, the one with the werewolf and the waitress I think it is?"

Ash is just as quick to continue where he left off, not giving Sam a moment to get a word in edgewise. "Oh, you mean that one with the prince that trades bodies with the dog? Isn't that one of your favourite's Hannah?"

Hannah eye's immediately brightened up. "Wait, you've never seen it Sam? I'll go and grab the DVD's right now and meet you in my room in just a minute! I can't believe you've never watched it!" And before Sam can say anything, Hannah's already gone.

"Shit."

"Well, would you look at that Sam," Chris stated, as though this all hadn't been his fault in the first place. "Seems that you're wanted for quite the movie marathon now. And Hannah isn't gonna wait for much longer. So ya gotta choose pretty quick."

"Fine." Sam groaned regretfully as she stood up, glaring at Chris. "I cannot believe that you two are seriously making me do this." With that, she reached up and grabbed his shirt so she could tug him down to her height and gave him a peck on the cheek.

"Foul!" Ashley cried out, completely unbothered by the fact that Sam had just kissed her boyfriend right in front of her. "Cheek kisses absolutely do not count. Lips only!"

"Jesus Christ, of course they don't count Ash!" Chris agreed in disbelief. "What kind of person would seriously count a pity kiss on the cheek as an actual—" he was left to sputter as Sam took this as her chance to turn to Ashley and pull her in for a chaste kiss on the lips.

"You." Sam said unconcernedly as she grabbed her book from off the the couch, pretending not to notice the excited grin on Ashley's face and the dumbfounded slacked jaw on Chris's. "Or, at least, you certainly did when it was Ash who would give them to you if I remember correctly."

Ashley just stood, proud as a peacock and looking for all the world like the cat who ate the canary. "You know what this mean then, Chris."

He let go of her hand to throw his arms into the air. "Oh come on!"

"I've kissed more people then you! I win!"

Sam took this moment to finally make her escape, leaving the two of the alone in the living room together. Ash to gloat in (Sam's opinion) undeserved victory while Chris wallowed in (Sam's opinion once again) well-deserved loss.

"That is so not fair! I got to her first!"

"Oh you're just jealous that she's a better kisser than you are."

"A better kisser?" Chris sputtered indignantly behind Sam as she continued her climb of the stairs, though she could hear the quickly building mischievous laughter under it. "I'll show you a better kisser!"

The sound of shrieking and giggling coming from Ashley, which was then quickly followed by what may have been someone falling onto the couch, was more than enough for Sam to pick up her pace up the stairs and leave the two of them far, far behind.


End file.
